There was no mistaking it. Maria had been caught.
Maria took a step back, the heel of her foot catching the corner of one of the boxes.
“The Amazing Arturo,” she said, unable to mask her wonder. He was unmistakably the man from the poster. It looked like he’d hardly aged since then; his slicked-back hair and severe eyebrows gave him the look of a black-and-white-film star. But unlike the dashing magician from the poster, the man standing before her wasn’t smiling. The man before her had sharp, cruel eyes.
“I th-thought you were dead,” Maria stammered.
“If it was up to me, you would still think that,” he said.
“Are you going to kill me now? The way I bet you killed Grandma Esme?” She wasn’t sure where this sudden boldness came from. She should probably be pleading for her life instead of giving him ideas about ending it. But the thought that this man had double-crossed Grandma Esme, had killed her over some stupid ring with stupid powers, made her so angry she didn’t have any energy left to second-guess herself.
“What?” the man said, his frown giving way to surprise. “You think I killed Esmerelda? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that these rings help people do things they later regret. I know these rings can get in the way of friends.”
Arturo sighed. “Well, you’re right, there.” He slumped down onto one of the boxes, planting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He reminded Maria of Rafi when Rafi was pouting. They had the same stormy eyes.
Maria inched her body to the left. Arturo looked just distracted enough that she might be able to slip past him and run. The rock steps would be tricky — Maria could already picture him grabbing her ankle as she tried to climb — but that seemed better than being killed in this forgotten cave.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Arturo said. Had he read her mind with his ring? She’d have to be more careful with her thoughts. “I wish you hadn’t found my hideout,” he continued, “but now that you have, and now that you think I … murdered Esmerelda — well, I suppose I had better explain a few things.”
Maria wasn’t sure. “How can I trust you?” she asked.
“You can’t, obviously. But at least you’ve got the right questions. Keep your distrust. It will serve you well.”
He looked so sad as he said this, Maria felt that she could … not trust him, exactly, but safely lean against this cave wall and hear him out. The second he tried to get up from that box, though, she was out of here.
“So if you didn’t kill Grandma Esme, what are you doing here in Florida?”
Arturo tilted his head to the side, as if he was listening to something Maria couldn’t hear. Maybe he and his spiders spoke at a different frequency. He said, “How much of that book did you read?”
“Enough to know that this isn’t the only spider ring.”
“Very good. There are eight rings — one for each of the members in the Order of Anansi.”
“The order of a what?”
“Anansi. The spider god, trickster god, god of all stories. Perhaps you have heard the tale of the time he rescued stories from the sky god, only you forgot his name. You would not be the first. His name is as slippery and treacherous as he is.”
“And you’re saying this … Anansi … is real?”
“In a sense. When you tell a story enough times, it has a way of coming true, whether it was true in the first place or not.”
Maria could see that. She doubted she herself could have become the shadow queen if she hadn’t first known the stories about what shadow queens were.
“In any event, whether or not Anansi himself is real, the Order of Anansi most certainly is. And, as you have seen yourself, their powerful rings are quite real, too.”
Maria looked down at the ring on her finger. For so long it had been Grandma Esme’s ring, “a gift from a friend.” The idea that it was actually an ancient relic that had been passed down through the years, like the book, made her a little dizzy.
“So you’re saying you and Grandma Esme were part of this Order, and I never knew it?”
Arturo glanced around the cave, as if there might be some prop or picture that would help him explain. “How much did your grandmother tell you about her past with me?”
“Well, she said that she used to be a lion tamer, and you were a magician. And she said that you two used to travel around Europe doing your performances. I even found a poster from one of the shows. That’s how I knew who you were.” She half expected him to congratulate her on this point, as if she’d made some brilliant deduction. He hardly nodded. “Anyway, that’s all.”
“So she never told you the story of how we met?”
“No,” Maria said sheepishly, like she’d gotten the answer wrong on a test. She felt silly and even a little embarrassed. Her grandmother had led a fascinating life, and while Maria had certainly appreciated her stories, she had never bothered to ask her for more.
“Then that’s where we’ll start. You might want to sit down.”
Maria still didn’t trust Arturo completely. If anything, she was even warier now. She knew that telling a story was like spinning a spiderweb. A good storyteller could lure you in, and before you knew it, it was too late — you were trapped. Maria would listen to Arturo’s story, but she wouldn’t let herself get lost in it. She was lost in too many stories already.
“All right,” Arturo said. “Many years ago, in the city of Cahul …”
ARTURO’S STORY
The sun had barely crested the hill on Strada Denoir when Arturo came bounding down the stairs and out the door to his bicycle.
The tiny house they shared with the Marandici family had such pitiful insulation, it hardly protected them all from the winter cold, let alone from the echo of footsteps and arguments. When one person in the house got up for the day, everyone did. Which meant that if Arturo had woken up just a few minutes later, or if he had taken longer to get ready, Nadia and Alec Marandici would have beaten him out here, and he and his bicycle would have been stuck for hours.
Arturo stuffed the brown paper package with the lamb shank in his basket, then placed the brown paper packages with the cotton shirt and the lace gloves on top. He’d learned the hard way what happened if he got the order wrong, when he’d pulled out the socks for Mrs. Saguna and found them covered in beef juice. His family had eaten poorly that week.
Today, two of his three deliveries were going to the same place. The Ionescus had been one of the first families willing to pay for their meat and their stitching to be delivered, and they were still some of Arturo’s best customers. He liked riding his bicycle to their house because Mrs. Ionescu always gave him a piece of candy. The Ionescus never ate poorly.
Because he’d left his house so early, Arturo still had a few hours left before he and his packages would be welcome. He rode through town, where the rising sun on the stone pillars and archways always made him feel like he was somewhere else, somewhere magical. Somewhere where war hadn’t planted its deep roots in the ground.
Once, when he was little, and Cahul was still a Russian city, Arturo had seen a parade of soldiers march down this very street. The display had been meant to inspire the city’s citizens, but Arturo had been more afraid than moved. Today, the city’s history of territorial disputes still peeked out everywhere in Cahul. There were even soldiers from the Great War in the city hospital, some of them on the mend, some of them only biding their time.